


Perchance to Dream

by Jaelijn



Series: B7 Trope Fics [2]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Gen or Slash, Post-Episode: s03e08 Rumours of Death, Season/Series 03, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 03:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12974583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: Vila had never wanted to be elsewhere more in his entire life.Vila had never wanted towake upmore in his entire life, but of course he couldn’t.For the trope: "Trapped in a Dream"





	Perchance to Dream

A decade or so ago, Arion had been famous as a pleasure planet. It wasn’t a traditional colony world – the seasons were volatile, leaving the surface as good as uninhabitable, but there had been precious ores, and so a high-tech mining community had been established. When the ore ran out, the stakeholders decided to make good use of the facilities that were already there and turn the place into a tourist attraction. Something that had been brought in for the miners had suggested it to them – a dream machine. It allowed the miners to get away from the dreary life underground by going to sleep in a pod and having pre-programmable dream scenarios fed into their sleeping brains. Initially, it was only a good night’s sleep, but as the technology developed, it included the option of being triggered to become aware during the dream-state, and having full control over the dream from within with just a few easy-to-learn techniques. Masses of people who had never naturally lucid dreamed or whose stressful lives had kept them from dreaming much at all had flocked to the planet, bringing money, which in turn had brought luxury, which in turn had brought more tourists and more money.

Until the Federation had taken over. The Federation tolerated easy entertainment, within boundaries, but Arion was strategic and getting too rich. After the Federation take-over, the industry had pretty much grumbled, and scarcely a decade down the line the splendour of Arion had been turned into the horror of an administered penal planet. Most penal planets were like Cygnus Alpha – oubliettes on which the prisoners were dumped and forgotten – but there were a few exceptions, places for torture facilities and for prisoners the Federation wanted to control until the day they died.

Avon had been convinced that, if they were ever caught by the Federation again, one of those planets would be where they’d end up. Blake had done the impossible once and escaped from what should have been a trip without return – now that he could be branded a child molester and terrorist, and his crew with them, the Federation would no longer care to discredit him further. A quick execution was the best case scenario.

They weren’t supposed to be on Arion, not yet anyway. They were _supposed_ to meet with a rebel contact on the dwarf planet in the same system, who claimed to have heard that Blake was interned on Arion. It wasn’t entirely unlikely, if Blake had fallen into Federation hands. They would have heard if he had been executed, but if they were still interrogating him… At any rate, they’d decided to follow up on the rumour, and this is where it had got them.

Vila had never wanted to be elsewhere more in his entire life.

Vila had never wanted _to wake up_ more in his entire life, but of course he couldn’t.

He was terrified. Dark, ominous walls were rising up at either side of him, leaving no sky visible above, and only a narrow corridor ahead. He had tried to wish himself awake as hard as he could, but it had done no good. He had tried to wish himself _elsewhere_ , as well, but that hadn’t done anything, either. Then he’d wished for a gun, trying for something small, but nothing had happened. Either the dream machine was inhibiting his attempts at influencing the dream, now that it was a torture device, or he just didn’t have the knack.

There seemed to be little choice but to follow the ominous corridor, though it made Vila’s skin crawl – though he supposed it wasn’t really his skin at all. After a while, it became evident that he was in some sort of labyrinth. Vila stuck to the right wall and walked, not daring to touch the material that made up the walls – it seemed menacing, almost alive, until he suddenly came across corridors that were brighter, the walls more like walls, and the crossings marked with blueish glowing numbers. Curious, Vila listed them in his mind as he walked, until, suddenly, he figured it out – the Fibonacci sequence, a task in simple addition, counting up steadily in the direction he was walking.

It was better than nothing, and so Vila increased his speed, following the numbers. What he found wasn’t quite what he had expected, but he wasn’t surprised – it explained why he had no control over the dream, why it felt foreign, like he was a guest.

Avon was crouching in a crossing, a flickering number half-formed on the wall above him.

Vila called out to him, at which Avon started and spun around on his heels. The number that had been forming above him stuttered and died, disappearing into the blank wall. It was as Vila had thought, then – this was _Avon_ ’s dream they had been trapped in – it made sense. The Federation couldn’t monitor the dream while it was in progress, but there would be a recording, and they probably thought Avon’s mind held more worthwhile secrets.

“Vila!” Avon sounded almost relieved, even though his expression was dark.

“Yeh, guess I’m stuck here with you.” Avon looked at him searchingly, and Vila hastened to add, “I’m real!”

Avon’s lips quirked. He looked horrible in the strange light of the labyrinth, ill and tired. “You would say that if you were part of the dream, too. But all right, let’s work on the assumption that you are.”

“Please!” Vila glanced at the wall where the number had been. “What were you doing?”

“It’s… a mnemonic technique. Also I thought that perhaps rational thought…” Avon trailed off, and his gaze suddenly snapped to somewhere behind Vila in alarm.

Before Vila had a chance to turn around, Avon clasped him by the arms and pulled, and they fell right through the wall of the labyrinth.

For a moment, there was nothing but the sensation of falling, and Vila wanted to scream but couldn’t, didn’t even feel like he had a body – and then, suddenly, he stood on firm ground again, and it was light, and Avon let go of his arms.

“Where did you take us?” Vila looked round, and immediately recognised the layout. A small room, blank walls, a sleeping platform, a toilet and washroom at one end, and an impenetrable door at the other. A Federation cell. “You moved us to a Federation cell?!”

“We needed to be somewhere safe,” Avon said, and sat down on the platform.

“Safe! You have a strange interpretation of safe!”

“Well, would you rather have faced down that _thing_ in the labyrinth?”

Vila hadn’t even seen the _thing_ , but Avon shuddered when he said it, and so he shook his head and went to the platform to sit next to Avon. “What was that, anyway?”

“A recurring nightmare I used to have when I was younger. I… learned to deal with them.” Avon ran a hand over his face. Small, sparkling writing appeared in the air before them – lines of code. Vila recognised some of the binary sequences.

“They’ll see those, you know, when they stick the recorded dream back into the machine,” he told Avon. 

Avon frowned, and the numbers vanished. “I need to think.”

“Well, for a start, why don’t you think something nice, eh?”

For a moment, there was something in the air, a light laughter, and a figure in the corner of the cell – Vila recognised her, even though the memory was so much more vivid, so much more _alive_ than the picture he had seen – but she vanished in a heartbeat, and Avon stood abruptly, turning away. His hands were clenched.

“Avon…”

“Not a word, Vila.”

Vila came up to him, knowing that he had to keep Avon’s mind from wandering. “I meant, think _us somewhere_ nice. We could at least enjoy it while we figure out how to get out of here.”

“We’re _inside my head_. How do you propose I should get out?”

“Well, how did you wake yourself up from those nightmares? I tried, but it’s your dream, so it didn’t do anything.”

Avon glanced at him, looking lost. He rubbed his left palm with the thumb of the right. “Rational thoughts. Maths, sequences of numbers, calculations. Usually, the simplest ones would be enough to wake me up.”

“ _That’s_ what you were doing in the labyrinth,” Vila realised, dismayed. “And it didn’t work.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Well, what, then? Sit here for all eternity? When I said I wanted to live my dreams I didn’t mean like this! I didn’t mean _your_ dreams!”

“Don’t panic, Vila,” Avon said, but the room around them suddenly appeared instable, and that did nothing at all to stop Vila’s mounting fear.

“What’s happening now?!”

Avon grimaced as if in pain and didn’t reply.

Then, from one blink to the next, the scenario shifted, and Vila found himself suddenly suspended by his wrists in what could only be one of the Federation’s interrogation rooms – torture chambers. Avon was before him, his back to Vila, swaying from where he, too, hung from wrist restraints fixed to the ceiling. 

“Avon! It’s a dream! Think something nice!” Vila cried out – but there was a translucent wall between them, and Avon showed no sign of having heard. “Avon!” Vila twisted, but he had no leverage to get free from his own restraints. He tried to kick out at the separating wall, but it barely left a mark when he skuffed the material. All he did was wrench at his shoulders.  

Avon jerked, and for a moment Vila hoped that he’d heard him, until he became aware of what was below Avon. A heating pad, glowing bright red to indicate it had been activated to a high setting, was just under Avon’s bare feet – feet he couldn’t lift for more than a few moments, try as he might, for the weights that had been fastened around his ankles. Vila felt sick. That Avon should know about this practice, should have experienced the practice came as a shock, but not as a surprise. Vila wondered whether it had been during his arrest, before Avon had really met any of them, or whether it was more recent, something from the five days Avon had spent waiting for Shrinker.

 “Avon!” Desperately, Vila tried to think of a nice, sunny meadow, something safe and pretty and nice, but this was Avon’s dream, and he wasn’t getting through to him.

Until, quite abruptly, they were on a beach. Vila wrapped his arms around himself, glad of the movement and hoping that it might keep him from shaking apart. There was a cool ocean breeze, though the sand felt hot through his soles. The fresh air, at least, felt heavenly in his throat after the oppressive torture chamber. He didn’t recognise the place, but perhaps it was a construct of Avon’s mind.

“Avon?” Vila turned around and found him, standing a few feet away looking strained and in pain. “Avon?”

Avon shook his head, gritting his teeth.

Vila looked him over. “Why the hell did you not give yourself shoes?!” If he could feel the heat of the sand through his shoes, Avon’s bare soles had to be blistering.

“This isn’t me,” Avon rasped – and the Vila realised.

“Something happening to your body?”

Avon’s jerk might have been a shrug. The beach had fuzzy edges in the distance; Vila couldn’t even see the ocean.

Vila crossed over to Avon, touched his arm, hoping that it would ground him. “Can’t you blank it out, make the dream do something contradictory?”

“It hurts!” Avon ground out. His fists were clenched. “I can barely concentrate enough to keep us here.”

As if on cue, the beach faded away and Vila found himself standing in Avon’s cabin on the _Liberator_ , his hand still on Avon’s elbow. Avon had closed his eyes, and Vila could feel him shaking.

“Not here. Avon, they’ll be watching.”

Avon looked up at that, and there was something pleading in his gaze that wrenched at Vila’s heart.

“Somewhere else. Somewhere _home_. Somewhere you feel safe.” As soon as the words were out, Vila realised that that was what Avon had already done – taken them _home_. If his realisation showed on Vila’s expression, Avon didn’t comment on it. His eyes closed again with an air of defeat. Their surroundings shifted with a wrenching, falling sensation.

When they stabilised, Avon’s knees sagged, and Vila caught him clumsily, having no time to take in his surroundings. “Avon?!”

“It stopped.”

 _The pain_ , Vila thought, _he’s talking about the pain._ He wondered immediately whether there was a break in the torture – or whether it was because they had gone somewhere else in Avon’s mind, somewhere deeper. He didn’t voice the thought and supressed the shudder that came with it. They already had no way out – what if Avon had just made it impossible for them to wake up, even if they were rescued? What if he had just trapped them so deep within Avon’s subconscious that nothing would wake them up?

Avon pulled himself upright and pushed away from Vila, sinking down heavily on the edge of a bed.

Vila glanced around. At first, the room hadn’t seemed in any way spectacular, or even out of the ordinary. It was on the small side, affording just enough space for a desk and chair, an armchair wedged into a corner – in front of which Vila was standing – and the double bed, which came right up against a wall with two windows, their shutters drawn. The wall to Vila’s right had doors – probably storage space, or a closet. However, when Vila started noticing the details, the room suddenly became a lot more interesting. Toys – not many, but still noticeable: a micro-computing kit on the desk, like one Vila had always wanted but had no hopes of affording legally. A set of low-voltage probes the right size for the hands of a child. A pyramid of some crystal or other; Vila could only tell that it wasn’t a particularly precious stone, sitting on a projector disk. It was switched off, but it was probably one of the ones that could be programmed to show starscapes. A ground flyer constructed out of modular building bricks, displayed on a stack of cheap, low storage data cubes – schoolwork, most likely. Vila had accumulated some of his own when he’d taken classes – or been forced to take classes, depending on how one looked at it – in the juvenile detention centre. There was a cylindrical casing leaning against the desk – Vila had seen them before, too, and knew that they usually held a roll-out piano. Behind Avon, almost hidden by the pillow, was a small plush toy that… well, it didn’t look store bought. It looked, from what Vila could see, as though it had been found somewhere, broken nearly beyond repair, and been fixed by a child who might have some dexterity, but no talent for this kind of work. It looked as though it was important, but had to be hidden. Vila tore his gaze away and found himself looking at Avon, who sat with his hands folded too tightly in his lap, just breathing.

“Avon?” Vila hedged.

“What.” It wasn’t a question.

Gingerly, Vila sat on the bed beside him. “We’ll get out of this, you’ll see. Cally’ll rescue us.”

“I didn’t want you here,” Avon told him flatly, “but it seems I can’t make you disappear.”

Vila stared at him, stunned into silence for a moment, but Avon’s gaze was fixed on his hands. He seemed reluctant to acknowledge the room, but of all the places they had been during this dream, it seemed the most stable, the most detailed.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Vila said, sure that Avon didn’t really want it, either. Hoping for Avon’s automatic, if caustic reassurances.

Only Avon said, “I always was,” and fell silent again, hands twisting.

“Avon!” Vila exclaimed suddenly, struck by an idea. He decided to ignore the way Avon flinched. “Maybe that’s it!”

“What?” Avon’s voice was still flat, but Vila thought that, perhaps, he’d heard just a slight note of interest.

“Maybe _you_ can wake me up! You control the dream!”

Avon laughed bitterly. “Oh yes. I control the dream.”

“Perhaps if you concentrate really hard on waking me up, it will happen!”

“We can’t wake up, Vila. That’s the whole point.” At least Avon was listening now, thinking.

Vila persisted, “We can’t wake _ourselves_ up. But we wouldn’t be, would we? You’d be waking me!”

“Do you think I would have willing invited you here?”

“No – but I think perhaps you don’t really want me gone. Perhaps you don’t really want to be alone.”

“You’re a fool, Vila!” Avon spat and stood from the bed as if to walk away, but then didn’t move any further.

“I saw your face when I came up to you in that labyrinth, Avon! Look, we’ll never speak of it again, all right? I forget I’ve ever been in your head, not that it’s been one of my favourite memories anyway, and you’ll just get me out so I can get you out! I want to _live_ , Avon!”

Avon threw a glance at him, looking doubtful. Then, after a moment, he nodded. “All right.”

Vila had expected it to take time, to take concentration, to take several tries. But one moment he was looking up at Avon, a dark contrast to the shutters and wall of the room in his dream, and the next he was blinking up at the closed lid of a dream capsule.

He felt groggy, as if he had slept too little, but didn't pause to enjoy the irony of that. He fumbled for the self-release, hoping that it would still be there – at least he hadn’t been bound…

An alarm sounded from somewhere, and Vila thought it might be because he’d woken up, and he had to be _fast_ –

But when the lid finally opened, he saw Cally, standing over the body of a Federation trooper, and Dayna, gleefully finishing off a second.

“Cally!” Vila called out, delighted to see them, and appalled when his words dissolved into a coughing fit.

Cally hurried to his side, but Vila waved her off and clambered off the capsules platform to hurry to the second one, in which Avon was still kept asleep. Monitors showed his heartrate, elevated from stress. His lower body was unenclosed, as Vila’s had been, and Vila took in the lack of shoes and the angry burns on Avon’s bare soles – a wide-beam probe had caused it, from the looks of it, and when Avon came awake, it would hurt like hell. He wouldn’t be able to walk unaided.

“Vila, what happened?” Cally asked.

“Long story. We need to get out of here.” Vila found the switch to terminate the dream programme and threw it. When Avon came awake with a gasp and a look of complete confusion on his face, Vila was already lifting the lid of the capsule.

“Cally, give us a teleport bracelet, would you?”

Cally wordlessly clasped one around Avon’s wrist when he sat up, stiffly and silently. Cally passed Vila a second just as he turned from Avon to face Dayna. “Dayna, say, have you got a bomb on you?”

Dayna bared her teeth in a grin and pulled a small walnut-sized thing out of a pocket. “Always.”

“Enough to blow this entire room to pieces?” Avon asked, his voice raspy.

Dayna nodded. “Of course.”

“Then do it. And place the charge right here.” Avon patted the platform he was still sitting on, then gingerly pushed himself off it, leaning on Cally and, after a moment, Vila, who hurried back to his side.

When Dayna had set the charge, Cally called for teleport, and the room vanished from view, rather too disconcertingly like the scenery shifts in the dream. When they arrived, Vila saw Avon’s expression twist in fierce concentration for a moment, then relax into something that was close to profound relief. Vila felt as though he could suddenly breathe again.

“What were those capsules, anyway?” Dayna asked, after they had settled Avon on the bench and were putting their bracelets away while Avon ran a first-aid regenerator over his feet. They would need more treatment than that, Vila knew – the regenerators were bad at burn wounds – but it would get Avon to the medical unit without excruciating pain, at least.

Avon paused and glanced at Vila, who held his gaze for a moment. “Oh, nothing, really,” Vila said, and persisted, despite Cally’s doubtful glance, “they just – ”

“ – put us to sleep,” Avon finished with a bitterly wry twist of his lips and a private glance at Vila that might have been a _thank you_.


End file.
